21 Simple Activities to Help Your Kids Develop Resilience in the Comfort of Home!
Listen to the podcast version:
Help Your Kids Bounce Back and Grow Stronger
Resilience is the ability to bounce back from adversity or difficult situations. It is a vital skill that can help children navigate through life’s challenges and setbacks. I am going to give you 7 tips to helping your children develop resilience and 3 activities with each one that you can do at home.
Tip #1 Foster a supportive and nurturing environment.
You are giving your children a strong foundation when you raise them in a nurturing environment.
Emotional resilience is fostered by feelings of love, value and support.
This enables your children to better manage stress, regulate their emotions and build positive relationships with others.
Activity #1: Family Bonding Time
Set aside a walking night or regular time for activities like family walks, game night, bike rides, or shared meals.
Activity #2: Create a “Safe Space”
We have a “cuddle chair” which you can cuddle up with someone, read a book, or grab some alone time.
Designate a special place your home where your child can go if they need time alone, quiet or calm time.
Activity #3: Emotional Check-Ins
This is great to teach to show interest in others and to communication your own feelings.
We had a daily “what happened today and how did you feel about it?”
You can discuss feelings, experiences, or challenges daily or weekly.
Encourage confidentiality within the family and interest among siblings.
Tip #2 Teach Problem Solving Skills
Children need to know how to solve problems as they are faced with them.
This means we cannot teach a “one size fits all” approach.
We need to teach children, instead, how to equip themselves.
Learning to analyze a situation, break it down into manageable parts, and explore different solutions empowers children to take control over their circumstances.
Activity #1: Role Play
Okay, I don’t love role play, it is just not my thing.
But, it is useful.
I would modify this to a “What would you do if…?”
Ask questions about how their situation impacts them, their family, their community, the world, for example.
Then, how would various solutions affect the same groups?
Activity #2: Puzzle Solving
I love actual puzzles.
You would not think there is a strategy, but if you watch, people do them differently.
Puzzles require children to think critically and find solutions to challenges.
Puzzle solving provides an opportunity for children to practice patience and develop the ability to handle frustration in a constructive manner.
Yes, you can do all types of puzzles, but if you get out an actual “old fashioned” puzzle, you will be “teaching” your child fabulous problem solving skills.
*I love puzzles so much, I am doing an entire blog on the power of puzzles next week!
Activity #3: Brainstorming Ideas
Brainstorming is an art form.
Do you remember, “No idea is a bad idea” when talking about brainstorming?
Encourage your child to come up with many solutions for a given issue or problem.
This is an activity where judgement is withheld and you are promoting critical thinking and creativity.
Seriously, depending on the age of your child and the depth that your child is “included” on the world’s issues (and whether or not your child gets depressed or anxious by these) try these topics:
- Bullying
- Environment (lots of topics)
- Animal Welfare
- Healthy Eating
- Privacy Online
- Human Connection
- Service Animals and Accessibility
- Hunger/Homelessness
Want to give brainstorming a try, but not sure what types of topics or questions to get started with?
I did 25 for you that get ideas flowing and conversation bubbling!
Tip #3 Encourage Optimism and Gratitude
There are a bunch of quotes like, “What you put into life, you get out of it.”
Research also abounds on the happiness and joy factor of people who purposely look for the good and think of reasons to be grateful, each and every day.
Help your child cultivate gratitude by reflecting on what they are thankful for.
Optimism and gratitude can help build resilience in the face of adversity.
Activity #1: Gratitude Journal
Help your child maintain a gratitude journal, where they can write down three things they are grateful for each day.
A journal, in my opinion, can be a tough thing to stick with.
It is also hard for your younger children.
Make this a little more fun and younger child friendly, by having your child draw or find pictures of up to 3 things they are grateful for each day.
This also teaches them symbolism, without ever having to go into a lesson about it.
*I love lessons that serve multiple functions!
Activity #2: Kindness Chain
Encourage your child to perform acts of kindness, such as helping a classmate or volunteering for a community service project.
Your child can then create “links” in a chain for every act they complete.
They simply cut out a strip of paper, write the act and date completed on it and attach to the chain.
Their chain can be on display up the banister, around a window, or in another place of prominence to show how important it is.
Activity #3: Positive Affirmations
Positive self talk is important.
We all hear our own voice, the loudest.
Unfortunately, we are also our own worst critic.
So, what we often hear is how we are not “measuring up.”
Teach your child to practice positive self-talk by repeating affirmations like “I can handle challenges” or “I am resilient.”
I created 36 amazingly simple and easy (not cheesy) positive affirmations for kids.
They are on hearts that you cut out.
The hearts remind them that they are loved.
Each affirmation starts with “Today I…”
Because they are designed to be an easy way to have a positive day.
Tip #4 Encourage Taking Risks
Encourage your children to take risks.
It can be daunting to move out of your comfort zone.
However, risk taking is one of the ways to cultivate within them a sense of adventure, curiosity, and creativity.
Leading to resilience skills because of the confidence created in the face of the new.
Activity #1: Adventure Challenges
Plan activities that have an element of risk taking in them.
For each child, this will be different.
One child may be ready for rock climbing, another, learning to ride a bike may hold that risk.
Activity #2: Debating or Public Speaking
Some researchers estimate that 75% of the American population have anxiety over public speaking in 2023.
Help your child “step out of their box” and encourage them to participate in debates or public speaking competitions.
This helps them develop confidence, assertiveness, and the ability to handle pressure.
Activity #3: Entrepreneurial Ventures
I am always amazed by people who say things like, “I started my first business when I was 11.”
Personally, I was a “babysitter extraordinaire,” but an entrepreneurial spirit, I was not.
In Unplugged and Happy: 100 Hobbies that Your Kids Will Love More Than Screens, I talk about “Family Hobbies.”
Raising chickens and selling eggs.
Raising goats and making soap and then selling it.
Raising bees and creating candles, and you guessed it, possibly selling them.
Teaching your children to work and then learn how to create a product that the marketplace desires is an incredibly valuable skill!
These ventures will also provide opportunities for creativity, problem-solving, and learning from failures.
Tip #5 Encourage a Growth Mindset
A growth mindset is the belief that challenges and setbacks can be overcome with problem solving, strategy and effort.
By teaching your children to approach problems with a positive mindset, they see obstacles as opportunities for growth, not permanent setbacks.
Activity #1: Stories
Share stories of individuals who faced challenges but overcame them through perseverance and effort.
Many times children can learn about their own relatives, what they started with and how they succeeded.
My grandfather came through Ellis Island when he was 5 years old.
He spoke no English.
He went on to become an engineer and orthodontist.
He constantly said to me, “Kara, education is what you put into it.
If you get a bad education, it is because you did not work hard and weren’t self motivated.”
He was a walking example of growth mindset!
If you have no family examples, there are a lot of books you can read together.
Activity #2: Goal Setting
I don’t know that we have our children truly set their goals often enough.
They are kids; the goals will change, that is okay.
This is teaching them another crucial life skill: flexibility.
Encourage your child to look at what they truly want and then set realistic goals for how they will get it.
Teach them how to find opportunities towards these goals.
It can also be very beneficial for your child to learn how to work their way backwards from a goal.
For example, they want to buy a car.
Instead of starting with where they are now, start the car, how to find the car, paying for the car, insurance, credit rating, driver’s license, etc.
Not sure how to teach your child goal setting?
Check out my blog on this very topic in January!
Activity #3: Encourage Effort
Outcomes are fickle.
We cannot always control an outcome, which is why you are teaching your child to have a positive growth mindset.
We can control our input.
Praise you child on their effort, attitude, and hard work, not the results.
Tip #6 Model Resilience
It always comes down to what children see.
Children learn resilience by observing and interacting with positive role models.
This interaction helps children develop problem-solving skills, optimism, and a belief in their own abilities to overcome difficulties.
Activity #1: Share Your Experiences
It seems as smaller children, kids love to hear stories about themselves.
As teens, they seem to love stories of us, their parents, messing up.
Use this opportunity to show how you experienced a challenge and more importantly, how you came back from it or coped.
This shows your child you had to learn and as you aged, you got better.
So, challenges are faced, mess ups happen, and you can come out on the other side.
Activity #2: Stay Positive During Setbacks
You really want to scream WTF!
But then you remember that this is the behavior your child will be modeling.
While screaming may feel good momentarily, it doesn’t do anything to solve the issue.
When you encounter set backs, demonstrate positivity, creativity, and problem solving skills that represents your resilience.
Show your children your “normal” response to life’s setbacks.
Activity #3: Problem Solving Together
Ask your child what they think.
Most children love to share their ideas.
Involve your children in solving everyday problems.
Demonstrate how you approach challenges and let them see your problem solving process.
Collaborative games are great for this!
Walk through your thought process, allow them to walk you through theirs.
Discuss.
Not sure what a collaborative game is? I have a link to that article and recommendations of our favorites!
Tip # 7 Foster emotional intelligence
Social emotional learning/emotional intelligence is one of my favorite topics!
Yes mom, you absolutely should be teaching SEL at home.
The skills you work on in social emotional learning are the basis for building resilience:
- Emotional awareness and regulation
- Building positive relationships
- Problem-solving skills
- Mindfulness and self-reflection
- Self-care and stress management
This topic is so important, that I did an entire article, 30+ Emotional learning activities for elementary age children, by grade level.
Here are three of my favorite activities:
Activity #1: Mood Meter
This is a very basic activity, but the foundation of Social Emotional Learning.
Many people, not just children, don’t really know what they are feeling, so they react.
A great example of this is fear.
Someone feels fear, but doesn’t reflect upon their feelings, so they interpret it as anger.
This anger then spews onto others.
Instead of others empathizing and understanding with them over their fear, people retaliate with more anger.
Now we have a lot of anger!
Create a mood meter.
Have different colors, like a thermometer, to indicate various emotions
Your child can identify and label their emotions on the meter each day.
I recommend using this tool before school and after school-you may learn a lot that you child is not outwardly sharing.
This promotes emotional literacy.
Activity #2: Friendship Bracelets
Make friendship bracelets.
Turn this from an arts and crafts activity into an SEL activity by discussing, as you are creating, what makes a good friend?
What kind of friend does your child want to be?
Do specific colors make your child feel certain ways?
Activity #3: Emotions Detective
Watch TV shows or movies and discuss the emotions and motivations of the characters.
What is the body language or “hints” your child is picking up on to determine the characters’ emotions?
“Reading” social cues can be difficult to learn, this activity helps teach your child with this skill.
Resilience provides children with the necessary tools to thrive in the face of adversity, develop healthy coping mechanisms, and achieve their full potential.
It builds their capacity to handle life’s challenges, grow from experiences, and maintain well-being in an ever-changing world.
By following these 7 tips and 21 great related activities, parents can help their children build resilience and equip them with the tools they need to face life’s challenges head-on and come out stronger on the other side.